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Returning To The Blasted World

Eugene — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 15:32:56 +0000

On June 9th, 2010 I once again walked on Athas by going to the first game of season 2 of D&D Encounters entitled Dark Sun: Fury of the Wastewalker. I’ve never been that interested in gaming at these events, preferring the company of a well established group, but I couldn’t pass up a chance to play Dark Sun before the August release.

The Encounters concept is a good one and conducive to how I like to play: very structured story, short game once a week, game is on rain or shine, and an ample supply of people wanting to play. Of course, the main reason I liked it was because it was set in Dark Sun, so I’m uncertain if I will continue after the 15 week season unless there are more Dark Sun adventures available. The way Encounters is set up allows for people to be able to miss games and not be out of the loop, which is good because it’s hard to imagine being available for all 15 sessions. I also got a DCI number (formerly the RPGA number) so I can feel extra cool/foolish. I say foolish because it is a strange concept to me that playing an rpg needs an organizational structure that warrants numeric identification.

I started playing D&D again specifically because of Dark Sun being announced as a 4E campaign setting. It is my hope that these Dark Sun Encounter sessions will be an nice bridge until the main campaign setting comes, allowing players to get into the setting and bettering the chances of a regular Dark Sun group being established.

Memorabelia

Eugene — Sun, 23 May 2010 20:58:01 +0000

Every D&D player from the 80′s remembers the red box, but does anyone remember what came in it? Books, dice, and a white crayon to fill in the numbers of the dice with. I still have the crayon and at least some of the dice that came in the box. I’m pretty sure the light blue die came in the box, and quite possibly the d20. I’m not sure where the red d10 and blue d6 came from, but they also require wax to show the numbers so I threw them in the picture.

Dark Sun 2E Resources

Eugene — Sun, 23 May 2010 20:51:41 +0000

Some might recall that in the early 2000′s WotC allowed free and for-money downloads of previous Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition (2E) products. I saw all the books I used to desire so greatly. Ready. Waiting. Since 3E was the version at the time, they really didn’t have much value, but one might say it came down to the principle of the matter. That is, I wanted them so badly before, I could now satisfy that latent avarice with one fell swoop of a credit card. And swoop fell-ly I did, obtaining all manner of books in pdf form for extremely low prices (I believe it was 5 dollars or less a piece).

With this method I was able to collect every Dark Sun game product produced for 2E even including the books that had small references to Dark Sun (Ravenloft’s Domains of Dread and the Book of Artifacts). I even got the extended and revised Dark Sun books. Not because they were good in anyway, but I wanted to complete collection just in case I had need for them as a reference in the future. Additionally, along with all the Dark Sun novels published during the 2E days, during my last gaming material clean-up I took out all the Dark Sun related articles from the old print Dragon magazines I had (I took a picture of them for all to see!).

Dark Sun 2E articles from the in-print Dragon Magazine.

I still get a nice feeling that I have them since they are hard to come buy and hold fond reminders of the Dark Sun setting. However, with 4E Dark Sun coming, my possession of these books takes on new meaning. Since new material for the 4E setting won’t be readily available, if I need a map of Tyr, Ur Draxa, some interesting weapons, monsters or adventures, I’ll certainly have a good source of references.